Transcript The Summer I Left Childhood I Was White (1882)

Katie Blanchard
 Racism or racialism is a form of discrimination based
on race, especially the belief that one race is superior
to another. Racism may be expressed individually and
consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or
acts, or socially and unconsciously, through
institutions that promote inequality between races.








Racism in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era and the slave era
a heavy burden on Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans.
in the South, lynching's were a public event, often advertised in the daily newspapers. Photos from
the time show mobs of jubilant crowds, including children, posing around the lynching victim. These
photos were then converted to postcards and sent around the country.
After a hanging, it was common practice to desecrate the victim's body even further by burning,
dismembering or tarring and feathering. Participants would then collect bits of the tree, rope, or the
body as souvenirs.
Between the 1860s and 1960s, the official number of lynching's in the U.S. was around 75,000 people,
though the actual number is probably many times higher. While lynching predominated in the
South, no state was immune to the terrorism of the lynch mob.
Until 1952, not a single year passed without a recorded lynching. As one unidentified Black
Mississippian said, "Back in those days, to kill a Negro wasn't nothing. It was like killing a chicken or
killing a snake."
This exhibit also shows that while the majority of lynching victims were African American, this
method of repression was used on other minority groups, including Native Americans, Mexicans and
Asian Americans. Beginning in the early part of the last century, labour organizers--usually
communists and socialists--attempting to organize sharecroppers in the South also became victims of
lynch mobs.
Full title:
An act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the
district courts of the United States of America to provide injunctive relief against
discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to
institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public
education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in
federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment
Opportunity, and for other purposes.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pulp. 85-315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957,
primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by
Congress in the United States since Reconstruction following the American Civil
War.
The process of throwing off legal segregation in the United States lasted through
much of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when civil rights demonstrations resulted in
public opinion turning against enforced segregation.
After Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the ratification of
the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870 providing the
right to vote, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbidding racial segregation in
accommodations, Federal occupation troops in the South assured blacks the right
to vote and to elect their own political leaders.
 The style of writing that Audre Lorde (1934 – 92) is
formal because of some of the language Lorde uses
‘rosewater and glycerine’. But then Lorde also uses
informal language to represent who she is writing
about for example ‘ the fuzz on them’, Lorde uses
colloquial language to express her feelings and her
family. Lorde uses standard punctuation, there is no
exclamatory or questions, Lorde knows what she is
writing.
 The features that make it look like Lorde is looking
back over her childhood is that Lorde callers her
parents mother and farther. The use of past tenses are
also a hint that Lorde is looking back over her past, ‘I
had read all’. Even the title of the piece is past tense ;
‘The summer I left childhood white’.
 Imagine that you are a white person looking at the
treatment of this black family, you decide to write a
letter to the manager and to the waitress that has
refused to serve that family. Using information from
‘Late the Washington afternoon my family……’ to ‘it
wasn’t much of a graduation present after all’.
 Imagine that you are an American news paper reporter
and that you have to write a column for your daily
paper on how racism in the USA has affected daily life
in the eyes of an American